


Counting Days

by ViolentSarcasm



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Sibling Bonding, This is the schmoopiest thing ive ever written and thats saying a lot, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 15:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11488833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolentSarcasm/pseuds/ViolentSarcasm
Summary: There are thirty-six thousand, five hundred and twenty-four days in a century.





	Counting Days

There are thirty-six thousand, five hundred and twenty-four days in a century. None of them were entirely certain if they stuck to the actual 365.2425 day fantasy Gregorian calendar each year(certainly the hunger didn’t care about leap years), but for what it was worth, mathematically, the seven surviving members of the Institute for Planar Research and Exploration spent about thirty-six thousand, five hundred and twenty-four days leaping from universe to universe, fleeing an unimaginably huge force called, depending, either “the Hunger” or “Jon.”  
  
It was around the 29,606 day mark when Lup barged into the dining room of their ship and, with great confidence, slammed her leg onto the table.  
  
“Check this shit out,” she said to the four people who had been, up until that moment, peacefully eating breakfast. She gestured to her legs, which were covered mostly by what appeared to be thigh-high boots with stiletto heels. They were made of denim, for some reason.  
  
Magnus, Lucretia, and Merle obediently checked that shit out, although Taako was more preoccupied with saving his food from getting squished under her heel. He flung a bit of scrambled-fake-magic-egg at her and said, “okay, you have horrible, terrible shoes. Are those _distressed at the knees?_ ” His horror was made less convincing by the grin that was taking over his face.  
  
“Yep!”  
  
“Jean boots…” Magnus said, awed.  
  
Lucretia responded, without missing a beat, “joots.”  
  
Lup pointed at her delightedly. “ _Yes!_ But, also, no. They already have a name. These,” she declared with a flourish, “are my nerd-seducin’ boots.”  
  
Merle started to laugh, although if it was in response to what Lup said or the high-pitched _wheeze_ that came out of her brother as she said it was unclear. It proved infectious, and soon the five of them were all giggling around the table.  
  
“Lup,” Taako said, still snickering, “ _all_ your shoes are nerd-seducing shoes. That nerd is _thoroughly_ seduced. Any more and he’ll hurt himself.”  
  
She rolled her eyes. “Taako, don’t be ridiculous, he’s not gonna-” as she was starting to speak, there was a loud _thud_ noise behind them, and a shout of pain. Lup whirled around.  
  
Barry stood in the doorway, hunched over and holding his forehead.  
  
“Wh-babe, what the fuck just happened?” Lup said. She was starting to take a step toward him when Taako, Magnus and Merle all collapsed into undignified laughter. Barry’s face went a vibrant shade of red.  
  
“I _told_ you,” Taako crowed at the same time Barry said, “I tripped!”  
  
Magnus snorted. “Yeah, you ‘tripped’ headfirst into the doorframe because you were staring at Lups fuckin’ _joots_ instead of watching where you were going,” he said.  
  
“I-that’s- they’re- _listen,_ ” Barry said, waving his hands ineffectively, then stopped and covered his face. Lup raised her eyebrows and tried to curb her smile.  
  
“We’re listening,” Merle supplied helpfully.  
  
Barry groaned into his hands. “I just wasn’t expecting- she- I-,” he cracked his fingers apart enough to catch Lup’s eye and continued, “you look very nice, Lup. I. Like your shoes.”  
  
Although she fought valiantly, that was the killing blow in Lup’s fight with her face. She grinned at Barry, and if it was a softer kind of smile than usual, less shielded by bad jokes and false bravado, well, it wasn’t like he’d tell anyone.  
  
“Dork,” she said affectionately, and pushed his hand off his face enough that she could touch the spot he’d whacked against the doorframe. He leaned into her hand on reflex and smiled back at her. Magnus wolf-whistled at them.  
  
She grabbed some fruit with mage hand, flipped Magnus off with one of her real hands, and caught Barry’s with the other. “Have breakfast with me on deck and away from these chucklefucks?” she said. He nodded.  
  
“And doorframes,” Taako shouted after them, still laughing, “keep him away from those!”

 

  
A few days later (forty-six hours twelve minutes thirteen seconds later, which is two thousand seven hundred seventy-two minutes thirteen seconds, which is one hundred sixty-five thousand seven hundred thirty-three seconds, not that anyone was counting then. But later, she’d have time to count. Later, she’d have nothing _but_ time to count.), Lup found herself alone with Taako. That wasn’t uncommon - they’d always felt more at home in each other’s company than apart - but the way he was looking at her was. His chin was resting on the back of his hand, and he had the slightest hint of a smile on his face. A _knowing_ smile. A knowing smile that definitely, absolutely couldn’t lead anywhere comfortable.  
  
It took around two hundred twelve seconds for her to break. _“What,”_ she said, glaring at Taako.  
  
“Nothin’,” he said, although his smile widened. Dick.  
  
“Taako…”  
  
He just looked at her. She felt thoroughly _seen._ It took another moment (forty-six seconds) for him to shift slightly in his seat.  
  
He clasped his fingers together and tilted his head, completely dropping the usual bits of his expression he kept up around other people. He looked as unguarded as she felt, as she had _been_ feeling more and more often lately.  
  
“You really love him, huh,” he said. It wasn’t a question.  
  
“I- _yeah,_ we’ve been over this, bro-”  
  
He shook his head. “No, you _really_ love him. You didn’t even make fun of him the other day when he walked into a _doorframe.”_  
  
“Yes I did,” she said defensively, wondering why she felt the need to feel defensive.  
  
“You patted his face and called him a dork, Lulu. That’s not-it doesn’t mean anything, since we live in space sometimes, but you’re over the goddamn _moon._ I...never thought you would be like that with anyone. I never thought _either_ of us would.”  
  
Lup considered this. “Yeah, me neither,” she said softly, “it’s… nice.”  
  
Taako snorted. “Okay, gross,” he said. She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m happy for you, I guess, is all. I’m glad one of us gets to have that.”  
  
She looked up at him. He met her eyes, and didn’t seem sad, just impassive. “Taako,” she said. He waved his hand.  
  
“We’re bein’ chased through the universe by a giant vore orb,” he said, calm as anything. “I ain’t got enough time with anybody in these worlds to fall in love. Hell, I don’t really _want_ to.”  
  
Now it was Lup’s turn to laugh. “Taako,” she said, “bro. Brother. Koko. My _dude.”_  
  
“What.”  
  
“You’re, like, the biggest fucking romantic I know-”  
  
“Barry.”  
  
“ _-Second_ biggest romantic I know. I’m calling it now, when we get out of this _fucking_ cycle, you’re gonna have a big gay storybook romance. I wrote a song _with_ Barry? You’re gonna get songs written _about_ you. You’re gonna, fuckin’,” she paused to snicker, “slowdance on the beach at midnight-”  
  
“Lup-”  
  
“Full moon creating a _halo_ around your face-”  
  
Taako threw a pillow at her. She caught it and kept going. “The swell of invisible violins in the background, fireworks going off, fuckin’, like, _somehow_ you’ve figured out how to ballroom dance on the sand in heels,”  
  
“Levitate,” Taako interjected, then scowled at himself for helping her.  
  
“Yeah,” she said, “that. Your handsome man will tether you to the earth and spin you around, and will murmur his adoration for you like in those shitty novels you read when we were teenagers-”  
  
“You read those too!” Taako squawked indignantly, and threw the only other cushion that had been on the couch with him at her. She dodged it easily, and continued listing dumber and more grandiose romantic ideas as he found smaller and less soft things to chuck at her. Her listing dissolved into laughter as he started conjuring small rocks; his throwing faded into more of a game of catch than a fight. Eventually he stopped, gazing out the window of their cabin(well, _his_ cabin, now, really; neither of them slept, but Lup had been spending her nights with Barry for years now) at the rising sun. Sun, singular, _green,_ but still a sunrise. He smiled softly.  
  
“It’s a nice thought,” he said.

 

\--  
Six thousand nine hundred and nineteen days passed, after that. Those days were all sorts of colors, all kinds of feelings, elation love fear anger sorrow desperation satisfaction pride, a blur at the time but crystal clear after  
  
Seven hundred forty days more, and Lup left a note and she _meant_ it, she did, but nothing ever works out the way you mean it to, and  
  
Three thousand six hundred forty-four days, alone. Three thousand six hundred forty-four days and all she had was those memories, because she never knew how to sleep and even less as a lich and even _less_ as an inanimate object held in her own decomposing hand, and as it turns out things go so much _faster_ when you’re thinking that you can count the seconds of a hundred years(in thirty-six thousand five hundred twenty four days, in eight hundred seventy-six thousand five hundred eighty-two hours, in fifty two point five nine million minutes, that is to say you can count all three point one five six billion seconds) a dozen times, to the point where you can cross-reference every feeling to a moment and every moment to ten more and  
  
Suddenly she was home again, the home she had made in the voices of her family, and there was more time(seven hundred and six days, but her counting was cast aside in favor of protecting her dumb brother from ogres and battlewagons and just really pretty shitty macarons and the godsdamn _grim reaper_ , although he seemed to get that one back under control on his own, really) and then there was the familiar feeling of everything ending and the better more familiar feeling of being _known_ and being _loved_ and she was whole again, or at least as whole as she _could_ be, and she was fire and lightning and so glad to fight alongside instead of in the hand of her brother and then-  
  
And then she stopped counting, mostly. She’d still tally in her head every midsummer, _three hundred sixty five days since we won, seven hundred eighty,_ on and on for two thousand five hundred fifty days, two thousand five hundred forty-nine nights since she could rest easy for the first time in a century. She did the math idly in her head on the seventh anniversary of the calamity. Two five five zero, six one three six zero point seven four, three six eight one six four four point four-  
  
She sat up when she heard the sound of a violin. Lup had been chilling on the sandy beach by Merle’s house, and had faded mostly into the meditative state of calculation, but there was something about the music that caught her attention.  
  
She stood up and dusted some of the sand off her person, wandering toward the sound. The music sounded organic, almost vocal; something in it was familiar.  
  
She crested a hill of sand and saw her brother and Kravitz, the light of the moon hitting them in such a way that they looked almost ethereal. The night was bright enough that Lup could make out Kravitz’ fingers on the neck of his violin as he played. She could see Taako’s unguarded smile, and Kravitz’ subsequent fumble and recovery.  
Lup watched him play silently. Aside from that one mistake, she had to admit he was better, even, than she was-she’d had a lot of time to practice herself, but the comparative lifespan of the grim reaper was probably a bit more than a century.  
  
The music told a story. When it started, it had been strange and discordant and lonely, and as it went on it was angry and nervous and happy and alive in turns, and as it reached a crescendo she felt herself swaying along to the familiar rises and falls that were the sound of love, taken from a person’s heart and translated into notes on a violin. It wasn’t the same; no set of strange and magical coincidences could cause someone else to love the same way she had, or to write it out in the same way, but the core of it, the beating heart of the music, was so familiar she found her fingers shifting like they wanted to play along.  
  
The song ended on a hopeful note, like it might someday be longer. It felt in no way incomplete, but, perhaps, open to a sequel. Lup heard fragments of her brother’s voice as Kravitz put the violin to one side, saw them wrap their arms around one another. She watched Kravitz’ silhouette lift Taako up and spin him through the air in an exaggerated but not wholly insincere way, caught bits of their breathless laughter. The light of the moon illuminated them like -  
  
Well, like the art on the cover of the bargain bin romance novels the twins had read surreptitiously in the back of wagons as teenagers, overblown images of swooning maidens and ethereal gentlemen slapped on paper to cover for terrible writing and questionable (fictional) personal decisions. Lup found herself covering her own laugh, imagining a book about a wizard and the grim reaper falling in love and culminating in one soulful scene on the beach. It would sell, too.  
  
For just a moment, the beauty of the scene passed beyond penny dreadful novels. For an instant, the light filtered between them, catching on the motion of Taako leaning down to press their foreheads together, illuminating his brilliant smile, turning Kravitz’ dark suit to shimmering silver-  
  
And then, of course, Kravitz got a call.  
  
Taako groaned as his boyfriend put him down to respond to the summons of the Raven Queen. Lup couldn’t make out what they said, but sine it ended with Kravitz smiling apologetically at Taako and vanishing into the night air she could assume fairly safely that he’d been called away on work.  
  
A moment passed, then two things happened quite simultaneously; Lup burst out laughing, and Taako flopped onto his back. He immediately sat back up again, hearing her, and glared in her general direction.  
  
“How long have _you_ been there?” he called.  
  
“God, long enough,” she said, still snickering. She jogged down the sand dune and collapsed onto the ground next to him. He scowled at her.  
  
“Don’t,” he started.  
  
Of course, she did anyway, because what kind of sister would she be otherwise?  
  
“Hey Taako.”  
  
“Stop. Whatever you’re about to say, _don’t._ ”  
  
She rolled onto her stomach and propped her head in her hands to grin at him better.  
  
“Hey, hey Taako,” she said gleefully.  
  
“Go away.”  
  
“Hey, do you remember that one time-”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
She paused to stick her tongue out at him.  
  
“I haven’t even finished my sentence!”  
  
“Nope, shit, homie, somebody just fed all my memories to a voidfish, I don’t remember anything that has ever happened, least of all you-”  
  
“-Me predicting this _exact scene?_ You, on the beach, a beautiful man serenading you under the light of a full moon-” she laughed and rolled back into a sitting position as he threw sand at her. She pointed to the horizon. “I admit the fireworks ended an hour ago, but I was close.”  
  
“ _Listen-_ ”  
  
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of you telling me how you weren’t ever gonna fall in love-” She cracked up again when her brother body-checked her onto the beach. He was laughing, too, as they wrestled like little kids. She was gonna be finding sand in weird places for _weeks,_ but it was pretty worth it.  
  
It took a bit for them to calm down-whenever one of them would start giggling the other would too, in a sort of terrible, cyclical laughter epidemic, but eventually calm down they did, and they settled side-by-side, staring out at the water.  
  
There was a long moment where neither of them said anything. They didn’t really need to, to know that they were happy like this; Lup knew that her pride and love was both more than she could ever say with words and nothing she’d ever _need_ to, and she knew that went both ways.  
Eventually Taako broke the silence.  
  
“The heart thing goes both ways, you know,” he said softly. She raised an eyebrow at him and he continued, “what you told me when you were deciding to become a lich. I just-I need you to know-” he cut himself off and waved his hands vaguely, like he couldn’t find the words.  
  
“Taako?”  
  
“I guess,” he said, “I need to have told you-if it had come down to keeping you or Krav, I know who I’d have picked. Like, if he tried to reap you, or whatever.” He bumped their shoulders together and steadfastly avoided eye contact. “I’m glad he didn’t. I-” he paused, voice choking a little, “I _do_ love him, Lulu, which is its own whole fuckin’ conversation, but if he’d tried to take you from me again I would have-” he scowled and picked at the sand under his hands, trailing off. “I-”  
  
“I know,” Lup said quietly. She watched her brother’s profile. His ears were pressed back against his head, like he didn’t completely want to be saying what he was saying. She knew how he felt. “I’d do the same if our situations were reversed, Koko.”  
  
He finally turned towards her, although he only looked at her long enough to bury his face in her shoulder. “I missed you,” he said, and he sounded almost angry at the words, “even when I didn’t _remember_ you, I did, I-there was this _hole_ and I didn’t know what was missing but-” he paused, and although she couldn’t see she knew he was carefully regulating his breathing, the way he did when he was trying not to cry. She ran her fingers through his hair and said nothing.  
  
“I hate being alone,” he said so softly she could hardly hear it. “I hate how long _you_ were alone, I hate how you were _right there_ and I _didn’t know_ and-” he made a fist in the fabric of her shirt. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I wish…”  
  
He never finished that sentence, but she knew what he meant. She did, too. They fell into silence again until Lup said “I’m sorry too,” barely above a whisper. “I’m glad we’re here now. I’m glad it’s over.”  
  
She felt him nod, then he sat up and rearranged himself so he was just leaning his head against her shoulder, rather than pressing his whole face up in it. They stayed silent like that, staring out over the ocean, until her thoughts faded to numbers again, counting the seconds between words and meanings and heartbeats and homes, and it was never how she’d meditated before the voyage of the Starblaster but it was all she could do now, and her thoughts faded into just digits and calculations as she sat there, safe and calm and no longer alone.

 

When she came back to awareness, Taako was awake and scribbling in the margins of his notebook, still leaned up against her. There was a blanket draped over both of their shoulders(she later learned it was Angus that had come looking for them and, in a moment of sentimentality, put it there). She dropped her head onto her brother’s and breathed in the sea air, at peace for the first time in days that weren’t _beyond_ counting, necessarily, but that she maybe didn’t _need_ to count anymore. She was safe, she was with her family, she was alive; that was enough. There was no reason to count the seconds that made up the centuries that would follow; she’d be living them instead.

**Author's Note:**

> This is dumb and corny but hey  
> OKAY IT'S DONE. I GUESS. Have this incredibly unpolished thing i finished at 2:21 am on right thursday, frantically, before Griffin comes rushing in like a bull in the fine china shop of my emotions in the first ep of the finale today  
> love y'all hope you liked this  
> catch me on twitter @viosarc
> 
>  **edit 6 December 2017** I FINALLY FIXED THE GODDAMN FORMATTING. SORRY @ EVERYONE WHO HAD TO READ THIS ORIGINALLY.  
>   
> 
> ps. i want everyone to know that this file is called joots.docx  
> PPS I FORGOT TO SHOW YALL THE JOOTS THEMSELVES L O O K  
> https://twitter.com/viosarc/status/883430605131620352


End file.
